Archive of Our Own

yunahollander.24 I have spent the last few months trying to understand how a mother is meant to keep breathing after burying her child.

I still don't know. What I do know is this: over the last two years, I have lost two sons, and lived through a kind of grief I did not know a person could survive. The first was Ilya. The second was Shane.

The world is mourning Shane, and the world has every right to. He was extraordinary. He was brilliant and funny and stubborn and far more tender than most people ever got to see. He was my beautiful baby, the joy and pride of mine and David's life. But if I'm being honest, and I think honesty is the only thing left for any of us now, the son we knew had already disappeared on May 9, 2024. The day Ilya passed, Shane went with him.

We watched our son wither in front of us for two years. We watched him become quieter, smaller, further away; watched him smile less, sleep less, eat less. We watched him try, of course, because he loved us and he knew how much we loved him back, but a part of him was already gone.

I know Shane's death came as a shock to everyone. For many of you, this felt sudden, and unimaginable, and impossible, and we mourn with you. For us, it's still unimaginable and impossible and devastating, but in full truth, it wasn't sudden. David and I knew, one way or another, that this was always a possibility.

Shane was not weak. Really, he was one of the strongest people I ever knew. But the love he and Ilya had for each other was so rare, so enormous, so all-encompassing, that once half of it was torn away, the other half was left trying to endure an amputation no one should have to endure.

People speak so casually about love. They use the word for everything and everyone, without a second thought. But what those two boys had was not casual, or ordinary, or simple, or even something that can be spoken of lightly. I have lived a long life and I have seen many kinds of love, and I can tell you that I have never seen two people love each other the way Shane and Ilya did. They loved each other completely, fully, fiercely. Joyfully, when they were allowed joy. Quietly, when they were not. Desperately, when the world made them feel they had to take it in secret.

There was so much said about them throughout their lives: what they meant, what they represented, what they were supposed to be. To me, they were simply my boys. My boys, who should have had a lifetime. My boys, who were cheated out of one.

I loved Ilya very much. I want that said plainly. I loved him as I loved Shane, and he was not "like" a son to me. He *was* my son, and I miss him every day. I miss his terrible sarcasm, I miss the way he always stole food off everyone's plates after insisting he wasn't hungry, I miss the way he acted like he was unimpressed by affection and then never really left Shane's side. I miss hearing them laugh upstairs. I miss seeing two pairs of shoes by the door. I miss the life they were meant to have, and that depression robbed them both of.

Shane had promised Ilya, a long time ago now, that he would win one more Cup for him, and that was the promise he carried after everything else was gone. In many ways, it was the only thing left keeping him tethered here. Hockey had once been bigger than both of them, and then, after Ilya died, it became the last place Shane could still reach for him. He poured every remaining piece of himself into that last season, and the boy who came home with that Cup last year in his hands was already so tired, so exhausted, that I think, in his heart, he believed he had finally done what he came here to do. And once he had, his purpose, what he had assigned himself in order to survive, was complete.

After Shane died, David and I found a letter he left for us. Some things in that letter will remain private because they belong to our son and to us, but there is one thing I feel I should share, because I don't want anyone twisting his death into something different than it was: Shane apologized to us. Over and over again, he apologized and apologized and apologized. He wrote about how much he loved us and how he wished he could keep going and that he was truly, truly sorry, but he just couldn’t endure living on without Ilya. Not for a second longer than he already had, much less the rest of his life.

My baby. My beautiful, beautiful baby. You have nothing to apologize for. Not to me, not to your father, not now, not ever.

I understand. God help me, I understand.

Since we came back to the cottage, Anya has been sitting by the water every morning without fail. She waits. She watches. She listens. Maybe dogs understand grief better than we do. Shane asked us to take care of her for him, and we will. We will take care of her for the rest of her life, just as they would have wanted.

In a way, that's what we're trying to do with everything now: take care, as best we can, of all that's left of them.

So, we won't hide them in death the way they had to in life. We'll say Shane and Ilya's names out loud. We'll keep their photographs up, and we'll tell their story properly to everyone who cares to hear, and we'll love them both until our own last breaths.

Ilya, sweetheart, we miss you as if you were born to us. I hope you know that. I hope you know how deeply you were loved in this family; how, in every way that mattered, you were as much a Hollander as any of us. I hope you know how proud I was to love you like a mother, to be there for you when your own could not. How proud David was of you, of the man you grew to become, and how he too loved you like a son. I hope you're at peace, wherever you are. I hope you found your mother again, and you reunited with her, and you told her all about your beautiful life.

Please take care of my boy now. He has been looking for you for a very long time.

And Shane, my love. My beautiful son. There are no words big enough for this: not for losing you, and not for loving you. I don’t know how to make sense of a world that still turns with you gone.

But if there is any mercy in this world, or the next, then I pray you’re finally where you always wanted to be: in his arms, watching the sunrise.

I will miss you both forever,

—Mom